New iOS Games This Week: July 10, 2014

It can be difficult to pick out the cream of the crop amidst the barrage of new iPhone and iPad games, but we’ve got you covered with our weekly look at the most notable new releases. The latest Magic: The Gathering game and the eerie Hellraid: The Escape are top options, along with a huge update for Minecraft: Pocket Edition. Give these a good look and then check back next week for more.

Like its tablet predecessors, Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015 (free, iPad) lets you check out the digital recreation of the beloved card-battler without payment, with additional features requiring the premium bump. Considering how great the last couple versions were, this seems an easy recommendation sight unseen — although the new UI does look super sharp.

uddenly delayed just days before release back in May, Hellraid: The Escape ($2.99, universal) is finally ready for public consumption, and this eerie first-person puzzler is definitely intriguing. It’s spun off from a to-be-released console shooter, but this rendition is slower and spookier, finding you wandering through dungeons, solving puzzles, and using mystical abilities to try and break free.

Minecraft: Pocket Edition ($6.99, universal) is now the all-time best-selling version of the smash building and exploration game, and with today’s update, it comes much closer to including all of the essential elements of the Mac/PC version. Infinite worlds, new area themes and enemies, and control improvements headline the large update, which should suck players in even further than before.

ans of the classic Tony Hawk franchise may want to check out Transworld Endless Skater (free, universal), a side-scrolling affair that tasks you with linking together flip, grab, and grind tricks as you ride through a school or across rooftops. While streamlined for touch devices, it seems like you still have a good array of trick options, although the controls seem a bit fumbly upon first try.

Last summer’s Sky Tourist was a very cool-looking and enticing iOS original, but some issues held it back from living up to its potential. Hopefully sequel Sky Tourist Blitz Trip ($0.99, universal) crushes the problems from the original, as it again finds you maneuvering an astronaut through colorful terrain to avoid obstacles and threats — all by guiding the rockets he’s tethered between.

The Shivah and Gemini Rue made Wadjet Eye Games an adventure gaming leader on iOS, and now Blackwell 1: Legacy ($1.99, universal) brings one of its earliest tales to the App Store. It follows a young woman who finds out that she can talk to the dead — thanks to a wisecracking ghost — and it’s the first in a five-part series. The second and third episodes are also live today, so dig in!

Mighty Adventure ($2.99, universal) is an extraordinarily cute side-scrolling game from an upstart Romanian studio, and the platformer finds you tapping to jump, stomp, and more as you zip through 40 levels. The unique hook here — aside from the sharp hand-drawn visuals — comes from the ability to swap between multiple characters at any time, as each provides a different skill you’ll need to tap.

The original Sonic Jump wasn’t the greatest of Doodle Jump-esque hopping games, but maybe the switch to a free-to-play model will make Sonic Jump Fever (free, universal) a bit more enticing? Within minutes of starting, we were greeted with a 30-second video ad that would only close if we downloaded a different game. So...no, that’s probably not a great sign of things to come.

Making burgers is serious business. Making video game burgers? Perhaps less pressing a concern, but Pixel Burger (free, universal) mines the concept for laughs and light entertainment. You’re provided a pedestal and instructions on each layer to add, and you must keep the burger complete and upright until it’s judged at the end. Cooking Mama meets Jenga, perhaps? Anyone else hungry?

Part game and part market commentary, FFFFF2P (free, universal) pokes fun at the free-to-play craze with a single-screen platformer that challenges you to stay atop of the ads being thrown from a creature in the sky. You’ll continuously run and leap to crush the ads and try not to get boxed in. Curiously, the game includes both real ads and in-app purchases. Satire, eh?